Another Big Bang Theory spec script.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/90547851/BBT-Comic-Con-Delineation-Script

Here's another Big Bang Theory script that I wrote. This was when the show still rocked (between seasons 2 and 3) and all my friends watched it.

Anyway, let's see what the 'story', or the 'unstory' is.

Cold open: The guys are excited about the upcoming Comic Con. (Morena Baccarin baby!)  However, Leonard thinks that they have forgotten something, he just doesn't know what it is. Others disagree. Penny comes down and tries to help them with this.

Main Titles

Scene A: Howard comes in and sees Sheldon and Raj arguing about the Hulk movies. After they're done, he says that something unexpected has happened and it's possible that they might not get the tickets to the Comic-Con.

Scene B: Leonard shows up with the tickets but is still wondering that they have forgotten something. Sheldon insists that Leonard is paranoid, until Raj figures out that perhaps the thing that they forgot was Penny's upcoming birthday. Others agree. Birthday, of course!

Scene C: Guys try to figure out what to buy Penny. Nobody seems to come up with anything good and unsurprisingly Howard suggests buying erotic lingerie. No deal, and Sheldon is unwilling to pony up the dough.

Act Break.

Scene D: We are shown that the guys are having a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock tournament to decide who has to or who gets to buy the gift. Then Penny shows up and the guys try to circle around what they're doing.

Sheldon eventually says 'enough' and tells Penny what it's about.. and that it's between Howard and Sheldon, who 'has' to buy the gift. This bothers Penny and things don't get better when 'sleazy' Howard wins the tournament.

Scene E: Leonard of course can't help himself  and goes to Penny's apartment to talk to her. Things don't go that well. Leonard explains the thought process behind the tournament. Big mistake. To make matters worse..

Leonard shoots himself in the foot multiple times. Like that he didn't lose to Howard, Comic-con is only once a year, unlike Penny's birthday and that simple things are hard to remember.. so does that make Penny simple?

Things get so bad that Leonard has to ask if there's even a birthday party the next day. Penny doesn't give an answer. In the end he promises to buy Penny a very expensive birthday gift to make up for his screw-ups.

Scene F: Leonard goes to the hallway, where he sees Raj and Howard. Leonard says that things didn't go well. Howard and Raj have decided what to buy Penny. It's a secret though.

Tag:  A scene at Penny's birthday. Finally we got see what they bought. Leonard has bought expensive jewelry and the guys.. they have bought Penny a ticket to Comic-Con. But where's the erotic lingerie?

South Park is mean-spirited?

One thing that got me thinking was when an unnamed producer said that South Park is a mean-spirited show.

I thought that hmm.. mean-spirited? Let's see.

The video above is South Park's song about figure skater Brian Boitano.

I know, Brian Boitano might not say or matter that much to you.

Neither did he to me. But then I watched the video below:

I think the question has been settled: not mean-spirited.

Should there be an 'unstory' credit?

One of the thing that has been bothering me for quite some time is the fact that no matter how awful an episode of a show is, someone is usually entitled to a 'story' credit.

Especially on 'Two and a Half Men'. Teleplay by Lee Aronsohn, story by Chuck Lorre.

Even though that episode would have absolutely nothing in it that would constitute as a story, the writer in question gets a story credit.

That can't be right, but that's the way it goes.

A 'story by' credit should mean something. It should mean that someone has written something that not only entertains us but also makes us feel good inside.

But too many times there's no story in the script. There's only that credit.

There are exceptions of course. If someone alone writes the episode, then that person gets a 'written by' credit and teleplay/story doesn't come to play.

There's nothing wrong with that. 'Written by' doesn't mean that he or she is going to tell you a story. It only means that he or she wrote it. It's a neutral term.

Story by credit, however isn't.

So I'm thinking that this problem needs to be fixed. What if we'd come up with a new credit: 'unstory'.

Would that make the situation better?

Obstacles, but not observations and opportunities.

One of the reasons that I didn't like the latest episode of Modern Family (Election Day) was that the episode had too many setbacks. For example, Claire lost her tooth, Cam and Mitchell accidentally left their microphone on, Phil had to do favors to his neighbor and Jay ran into his former girlfriend that he didn't want to meet.

'Election Day' wasn't good because there weren't enough redeeming qualities in the episode. The storylines ran almost purely on obstacles and setbacks that didn't really add up in the end. It was just too obvious and I'm not a fan of writing like this.

If you want to write a script that runs on setbacks and obstacles, you'd better provide something that also counters the negative setbacks with some positive things. That would be something like having solutions, observations or opportunities for the characters. Otherwise your episode is going to be pretty depressing to watch.

Modern Family is supposed to be uplifting but it was pretty depressing to see Claire chipping her tooth and not recognizing the implications of that in the interview. I bet that in real life she would have observed that she had a problem. So that was lazy, one-dimensional writing.

I also didn't like when Cam & Mitchell left the microphone on and started badmouthing a person who was nearby. It just wasn't believable that they didn't observe their voice from the loudspeakers. (I did like when they saw an opportunity to use the mic but the setback just wasn't handled well)

Phil's problem with taking the old-timer to vote wasn't believable either. To me it felt like the obstacles were pretty randomly put together and weren't well thought out. Phil's reaction wasn't that he was going to handle the situation. It was more like him being a passive-aggressive passenger than being someone who saw an opportunity to save the day. It just wasn't good or funny.

The same unfortunately has to be said about Jay's storyline too. His obstacle was his former girlfriend as an official who apparently tried to prevent him from casting a ballot (that's supposed to be illegal by the way). There was no observation and no opportunity here either. Disappointing.

So, how do you handle an obstacle? How do you counter a negative with a positive that the audience doesn't know to expect? Well, I mean, I guess you just have to find a way. If your script has an obstacle, try to make an observation and try to find an opportunity for the characters. It's not easy, but you are supposed to write something that the audience wants to see but nevertheless won't see coming.

South Park goes Bill Hicks.

So, South Park paid a tribute to Bill Hicks, the late comedian who unfortunately passed away 18 years ago at the age of 32. For quite some time I had been thinking that it would be fitting if Trey Parker and Matt Stone did a tribute to Hicks.

Fortunately I didn't have to wait that long. This nod to Hicks happened two weeks ago and the homage is in the episode 'Cash for Gold', 16x02.

The episode is about our guys getting back at a home shopping network that rips off gullible people. That is because Stan's grandpa buys him expensive jewelry that has no real value.

Once the kids find out that a six thousand dollar necklace is worth only twelve bucks at the pawn show, they think that something has to be done about it.

Cartman, of course, has his own schemes, in which he comes with his own home shopping network and jewelry line. Stan however begins making phonecalls to the network. He demands that the Jewelry Bonanza's Dean no less than 'kills himself'.

How this relates to Bill Hicks is of course that Hicks had his bit about advertisers and marketing people - who should simply kill themselves because they ruin everything that is good about life.

Admittedly that's a pretty tough stance that Hicks took, but he thought that anything should go - otherwise there would be no point to it at all. This is consequently something that Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park believe in too. If there's something that you can't say or do in a cartoon, then the whole thing becomes meaningless.

In theory nothing is supposed to be off-limits.

So naturally - based on that... umm.. principle - in 'Cash for Gold, it turns out that the guy from 'Jewelry Bonanza' does blow his brains out in the end. Not because it was a random act that didn't make any sense, but because the story became better and more meaningful because of it.

Anyway, here's Bill one more time from 'Revelations' (1993); Bill being fearless and honest at the same time. Like the guys behind South Park. We seriously need more people like them.

Ps. There's a meeting at the docks tomorrow.

Classic David E. Kelley character stuff.

The latest episode of Harry's Law reminded why I used to love watching David Kelley's shows back in the day.

Well, to be completely honest, this episode wasn't necessarily that great but it nevertheless had certain elements that other writers and showrunners aren't able to incorporate into their own shows. For one reason or another anyway.

What I mean by this is that Kelley has the ability to come up with ideas that are simple and yet at the same time remarkably effective. His ideas are psychologically axiomatic, whereas others tend to come up with ideas that are convoluted and derivative ..and perhaps even non-existent.

For example, the episode that aired on Sunday had a character who suffered from delusions and was institutionalized. So Harry meets this person, doesn't really want to believe what the guy is saying and even asks whether he has taken his meds as he's supposed to.

Of course this doesn't seem that interesting. That is until the guy tells us that he's aware of being delusional and that, yes, he has to take his medication. But even though he might he delusional about everything else, he's not delusional about this case, he says. So Harry needs to help him, otherwise justice won't be served.

Now, I don't know about you but at least to me this was exactly what writing is supposed to be about. We're supposed to create these underdog characters and 'one time' situations that give the audience a reason to give a damn about the story. There was a rooting interest here and it paid off nicely.

Kelley's Emmy winning series 'The Practice' probably did it better than any other show. I mean, I can still remember the lawyer who could never win a case, the cancer researcher who became an alcoholic after losing his most important trial and the old lawyer who wanted to win one more time before becoming incapacitated.

Those were awesome episodes that I can watch again and again. The premise was almost too simple in these cases. Well, almost. Because in the end there was nothing wrong about making it that way.

The truth is that just because your storyline isn't complex doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad and that it's going to suck. In fact, most of the time it's the other way around. Usually simple turns out to be good, honest, beautiful and real.

Writing another Modern Family spec script.

Well, truth to be told, I didn't feel like writing another Modern Family script. That's because I didn't think I would be able to come up with good story ideas. I also thought that there wouldn't be any point in writing another script because it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

But for some reason (perhaps to prove myself that I could write Haley & Alex) I did write it and what I learned from the experience is that you shouldn't judge yourself too easily. Just because you think you can't come up with anything new doesn't necessarily make it so. I think I actually came up with pretty good storylines.

Another thing I learned from writing the script is that you don't have to write that much every day. In fact, if you write a mere two pages a day - and that's not much - you'll write a script in just two weeks. That's something that everyone should keep in mind if they think that writing a spec takes too much time.

The thing is that I didn't write more than two pages a day. Not even once. The minute I had reached my goal for the day, I closed the screenwriting software. I didn't have to do more than that. (not that I was particularly motivated either)

As usual, I tried to come up with an outline because that's how you're supposed to write your scripts. So what happened was that I really tried to try and I wanted to have some kind of a blueprint to work from. But as usual, I just couldn't come up with one this time either. I just wrote and hoped for the best.

Oh, the storylines. They are (in no particular order):

The first one, is about Alex and Haley getting to know each other better. Since Haley doesn't have anything better to do that day, she joins Alex who has her 'pick one piece of a litter a day' project going on. The twist here is that Claire, who happens to be jogging at the same time gets these two in the act - smoking that is. Except that Alex & Haley aren't really smoking.

The second storyline is about Jay and Phil going to an auctioning event. Claire, who is worried that Phil might make stupid bids, calls Jay and asks him to join and to look after his husband. Jay doesn't have a problem with this - because the audience knows that he's determined to get one specific item from the auction - at any cost.

The third storyline is about Mitchell having his big day at the court. However, he is so worried about screwing up his closing argument that Cameron has to calm him down and make sure that he won't fall apart.

I also have some stuff for Manny and Gloria, but four storylines in one episode is too much, so I had to take that into consideration. Other than that, the Mitchell & Cameron storyline doesn't have any twists so that one runs purely on observations that hopefully make sense.

Anyway, I'll publish the script at some point.